Next stop: judges’ houses. Last weekend’s X Factor saw the stressful bootcamp stages take place, which whittled the contestants down to just 32 hopefuls.Saturday (September 24th) got off to a shocking start as lead judge Gary Barlow chose to review all of the tapes and cull some of the contestants before bootcamp had even started.
While the successful solo artists and groups who had received majority votes in the auditions partied away at a mansion outside London, Gary and fellow judges Kelly Rowland, Tulisa Contostavlos and Louis Walsh took another look at the acts.
They kicked off the first day of bootcamp by sending home a host of contestants before putting all of the other acts into groups to prepare a song.
After yet another round of eliminations, the judges then chose to repeat last year’s success story and offered a lifeline for some of the solo acts to form six groups in the hope that another One Direction could be born.
Day two kicked off with each remaining contestant performing their own take on a well-known song in front of thousands of people at Wembley Arena. It led to some surprises, with early favourites flaking at the challenge and other finalists proving their worth.
The challenge also saw some memorable performances. Kitty Brucknell, who is in the over-25 category, spent more than £2,000 on her outfit which flashed as she sang Feeling Good, while teenager Janet Devlin was immediately named the early favourite after singing Aerosmith’s I Don’t Want To Miss A Thing.
Now, just 32 acts will go to the judges’ houses before four acts are chosen to represent each category for the live shows.
The weekend also saw the judges discover which category they would be mentoring. Gary Barlow will support a strong-looking boys category, taking them to Los Angeles, while Kelly will be mentoring the girls in Miami.
Tulisa was given the groups, which include the newly-assembled solo artists, and Louis was handed the over-25s.